Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, October 11, 1994 TAG: 9410110134
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WILLIAMSBURG LENGTH: Long
As painful as it was to watch black people sold as chattel Monday at the re- enactment of an 18th century slave auction, it's something Americans should remember, a Virginia black leader said.
More than 2,000 people watched along a cobblestone street in this refurbished colonial settlement as four black actors portrayed slaves who were actually sold in Williamsburg in 1773. Some wept at what they saw.
Jack Gravely, the Virginia political action director for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, had denounced re-creating a slave sale.
``We don't think a people who have come so far should be trivialized in a carnival atmosphere,'' he said before the performance. But the poignancy of it changed his mind.
``I would be lying if I said I didn't come out with a different view. The presentation was passionate, moving and educational,'' Gravely said afterward.
Christy Coleman, who portrayed the slave woman Lucy, emerged before the presentation to calm spectators after Gravely and Southern Christian Leadership Conference board member Curtis Harris rose to criticize the event.
``They were getting very angry very quickly,'' Coleman said of the mostly white crowd gathered outside the Wetherburn Tavern, a Williamsburg building restored to the way it appeared about 1760.
``This is important because it humanizes slavery, it puts a face on what happened,'' she said. ``People will remember what they see far more than what they read.''
Her performance was part of the reason Gravely changed his opinion.
Lucy, a house servant clad in a neat white dress and a blue cape, was offered for sale along with her husband, Daniel. She emerged from the tavern with her head nestled against Daniel's chest, sobbing at the knowledge that they would be parted and sold to different masters.
``Please, please don't do this,'' she wailed. Actors portraying the white slave traders remained impassive to her pleas; the crowd stared in silence. ``Please, Mr. Taylor, please buy me, too!'' she implored the landowner who had purchased Daniel.
Lucy sold for 50 pounds British currency in the re-enactment; Daniel, also a house servant, sold for 62. Billy, a slave carpenter, sold for 70 pounds because the price included a wooden box of rudimentary tools.
Another slave, Sukey, a laundrywoman, had a kinder fate: She was bought by her husband, Johnny, a freed slave who could muster her 42-pound purchase price and would free her.
In the crowd, three members of the International Socialist Club at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg stood with signs denouncing the mock slave sale.
``This is pure and simple entertainment, making money off people's oppression,'' said Andrew Highsmith, a white student from Cincinnati.
who objected to showing only blacks who passively accepted slavery.
``It's not showing the true history of what it was like to be a slave,'' he said. ``Where is the story of people who fought back?''
Larry Earl, a black actor who has taken part in several Colonial Williamsburg re-enactments, said some programs depict slave violence against abusive masters. In one dramatization, a slave killed his brutal overseer.
``There were two forms of resistance against slavery - active and passive - and we show both,'' Earl said.
Not everyone in the crowd agreed with Gravely's remarks before the event. ``I brought my children here to see the evils of slavery. I brought them here to be educated,'' one white woman yelled from the rear of the crowd as Gravely spoke.
Even though he felt the performance was tasteful, Gravely said the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People may not drop its protest.
Harris remained critical afterward.
``I felt this was nothing more than a show, not an authentic history,'' he said, noting that the crowd clapped afterward.
The concerns are much the same as those black leaders voiced after Walt Disney Co. announced last year it would build a history-based theme park in Northern Virginia. They said there was danger that slavery would be trivialized in such a setting.
Perhaps more brutal than the dramatization itself were the answers the actors provided to questions from the crowd afterward.
``What happened to slaves who ran away?'' one person asked. Depending on the owner, the actor replied, they received punishment ranging from reprimands to lashings with a whip to having fingers, hands, toes or feet chopped off.
``What happened to slave children born with handicaps?'' another questioner wanted to know. Another actor said they were either killed or abandoned to die because medical treatment was scarce and expensive.
Memo: shorter version ran in the Metro edition.